The whistle signaling the start of the great ocean race sounded at 1:10 p.m. For the 133-foot schooner yacht Coronet, the sound struck like the lash of a whip. “In one second,” The New York Times wrote on March 13, 1887, “she was transformed from a stately pleasure craft to a flying greyhound of the sea. Up went the helm, over went the foresail to port, away went the main sheets, and the great boom swung far out over the port quarter. The wind was nearly dead aft.”
Voices on the River 